The Fall of Steve Rogers
by Katowisp
Summary: Steve had always known he was living on borrowed time, but he never expected Winter would come personally to claim him. (Directly follows "Spaces Between Days"


Disclaimers: These characters are not mine

For continuity: Follows Spaces Between Days

_God's got your number_

_And He knows where you live_

_Death's got a warrant out for you_

_-Death's Got a Warrant—Patty Griffin_

The team was running.

Steve felt every step, every jarring blow through his body. His arms had been wrapped around Bruce and Tony's shoulders, his feet dragging limply behind him.

He tried to will his legs to respond but they weren't keen on the idea and remained unresponsive, which Steve found wholly unsurprising given the hole in his chest. He found his eyes drawn to it in curiosity, but it was too difficult of a motion, and he settled for resting his chin on his chest, passively watching the blood stream down his body.

The woman who had stabbed him had followed Loki to Earth.

"He's not here now," Steve had told her, but instead of leaving like he'd expected, she had killed him.

He'd tried to fight, but his vision was already doubled from Loki's earlier assault on him, and the subsequent familiarity with the alley wall.

Despite his attempt at fending her off, she'd had a determination he lacked—a hatred he couldn't understand that fueled her attacks in a fury he'd only ever seen in the Hulk.

She was controlled in a way that the Hulk nearly never was though, and while he'd fought a lot of things in his life, he didn't know the first thing about fighting someone with a spear.

Words of placation were useless, and after she had used it first as a melee weapon, swinging it around to connect solidly with an arm he'd barely raised in time, one of the bones in his forearm cracking as the wood connected, he had known that trying to talk himself out of the fight would be futile. She had been determined to kill him, and he didn't know why.

The second hit had connected with his head, sending him back into the wall where he'd collapsed as stars exploded behind his eyes.

If he hadn't been concussed before, he had been in that moment.

Steve was sure his skull was fractured, a giant vice that seemed to tighten around his brain with every beat of his heart. His body was working overtime, knitting bones and flesh together, and it wasn't enough.

He'd struggled to a sitting position, acutely aware of the snow falling around him. Christmas lights had been blinking merrily just twenty feet away, and passing shoppers hadn't even look his way.

Steve had suspected (_hoped) _there was some magic around the alley, keeping them cloaked.

Steve had met her eyes. She had been beautiful, in the same way the first snowfall of a season was, when the world was cold and quiet and the clouds had rolled out, leaving only an impossible blue sky and wispy glittering clouds.

She'd assessed him with icy eyes, and had Steve thought he'd never seen skin so white. It matched the porcelain set his mother had owned when he was a child—he had cut himself on them once, and just like the plates, she hadn't shown any sympathy or understanding. They were just plates, and she was his death and there didn't need to be a reason.

"Are you the Angel of Death?" he asked, because it made sense. He should've died several times over, and maybe he was an abomination and Death had grown tired waiting.

She had laughed then, but it was the sound of porcelain shattering and there was no humor in it.

"I am _your_ death," the woman who was to be his end replied with a cold smile. Then, she had thrust her spear forward into his chest, stealing the air he'd always fought so hard for.

Steve's good hand had automatically flown to the foreign object protruding from his chest, brain only then starting to register the incredible pain that followed. He had instinctively known that if he could get it out in time, his body might heal, but then she had put her weight behind it, pushing it in deeper, and Steve could feel the tearing as it ripped through his back, pinning him to the wall.

"Why?" He'd gasped as she pulled away, ripping the spear with her. It had come out with a sucking sound, pulling the last of the oxygen from Steve's lungs and suddenly the act of breathing was an impossible task.

She had leaned in, all artic wind and polar ice, gripping his chin as she forced him to look at her.

It hadn't been Death who had come for him, but winter, angry that he'd escaped her clutches when he should've remained entombed in her icy grave.

"You can tell Loki, when you see him in Niflheim, that we're not even yet, but this is a start," she had hissed, and then she had been gone.

"Hey, Steve, you with us?" Tony jostled his shoulder, causing Steve's head to loll against his chest and his foggy mind to return to the present.

The Bitfrost was below him, a dizzying ocean of stars and galaxies. Steve thought he might be sick.

His arm was screaming at him, and he wanted to tell Tony to go slower, but either Tony wasn't listening, or he'd forgotten to mention it, because their pace only grew faster.

He was leaking a trail of blood on the road, and could see it marring the glittering crystal.

Steve knew he should be alarmed, but his blood was searching for better clime, for summer and dappled sunshine. He'd frozen it too much, and it wanted to be warm again. He couldn't be angry at it, would follow it if he could.

The mask Bruce had slapped across his face was suddenly claustrophobic, and he made to rip it off forgetting his arms were wrapped around Bruce and Tony. He wanted to tell them to take it off because he couldn't breathe, but his throat was crowded with blood and forced oxygen and there was no room for words.

A booming voice greeted them, and for a moment, Steve was trapped in the hourglasses of Heimdall's eyes. He was the sand trickling through the chokepoint that was a thousand years of battles won and lost, but then Heimdall broke the gaze, and he was free again.

They stopped only long enough to jostle him onto a cot as broad-faced women in simple tunics filed in around them and tried to carry him away, but Bruce and Tony refused their help. His teammates hefted him up, jostling violently in the action, and the world shifted sideways for a moment. Then they were running again.

He wanted to tell them that it would all be okay: that they'd be okay, and that _he'd_ be okay, but the words refused to leave his chest.

They weren't, though, and he wouldn't be, and the team knew it.

He could see it in Tony's clenched jaw, in Bruce's tight shoulders. He flopped his hand out, brushing bloody fingers against Bruce's hand.

Bruce looked down in surprise. Steve could see the war in his eyes as Bruce fought for dominance over the blind rage that threatened to overwhelm him.

_The team needs you to keep your head,_ Steve would've said, but the breathing was hard enough without forcing words through his battered throat. Bruce squeezed his hand with a gentleness he wouldn't have thought possible under the circumstances.

"We're almost there."

Steve didn't know where _there_ was, but he tried to smile back. Bruce's eyes narrowed, and Steve thought he might have grimaced instead. He tried again, but the muscles of his face were reluctant to obey, so he gave up.

There was blood pooling underneath him, sticky and uncomfortable. He wanted to tell them to get someone to remove it. His boot was on too tight, and the laces bit into his foot, but nobody seemed to be listening.

"Loki," Steve started, because he had the feeling there wasn't much time and he had to tell him winter had come to settle her score between them; that she was coming for Loki.

But the team didn't hear him, or he hadn't said it, because no one responded.

"Hey, hey, come on, stay with us," and that was Natasha. She was in gray sweats and Steve imagined she'd been lounging on the couch with Clint watching some Christmas special or maybe Pawn Stars when the call had come in.

There was a painful jarring as he was moved onto a bed. He groaned, acutely aware of the gaping hole in his chest in a way he hadn't been a moment ago.

Blissfully, the world had stopped moving. He stared up at a strange ceiling, arching and distant. Someone had painted an intricate scene of a field caught in the gloaming, lightning bugs just rising from the grass and the first stars of the night evident in the darkening sky.

For a moment Steve was in that field, surrounded by the song of cicadas and frogs and he thought he might be home.

The team's escalating arguing pulled him back to his uncomfortable reality.

Steve wondered what they were arguing about, but their words were coming too fast, too loud, and Steve wondered when everyone stopped speaking English.

He was only vaguely aware of Queen Frigga's sharp orders as she and her army of healers attempted to knit broken vessels and return oxygen to lungs seeking it and finding none.

"You'll be okay," he wanted to tell them, because Steve knew what was going to happen next and he was pretty sure his team did too if the concerned faces swimming above him were any indication, and Steve couldn't tell if it was tears or sweat that caused Clint to squint his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he wanted to say, because Tony was already having nightmares and was drinking too much and he was sure this wouldn't help the matter all.

But he was drowning in a sea of black, all the words and wishes he'd ever had floated around him like the flotsam of a wrecked ship and he couldn't grab them fast enough before they drifted away.

To be Continued in Lonesome Traveler, in which the Avengers travel to Niflheim to get Loki and Steve back.

A/n: Please post commented. Do you hate everything I write? I'd love to know. Entirely unsarcastic, too. I've spent over a year and a half on this particular story, and although I recognize I'm just a struggling writer, it hurts when no one comments on anything I write. If it sucks, why? And, how can I make it better?

Thanks for you time and consideration,

Katowisp


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